All Sections on M5M5. Bristol Birmingham Motorway (J3 to J8)Anyone who studies a road map of the Midlands would be excused from wondering why a short length of motorway running through the rural areas of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire was ever required let alone built. Even today, over 40 years since it was opened, it remains a delight to drive on with comparatively little traffic using it. The reason for this lies behind a pre-war vision that there was a need to connect the steel manufacturing centres of South Wales with the metal bashing industries of Birmingham and the Black Country.